A man from the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands jailed for more than two years after the FBI targeted him as a possible Denver-based terrorist – but never charged him – has begun a last-ditch legal gambit to resume his life with his U.S.- citizen wife and four kids.
Still in prison in Colorado, Haroon Rashid has filed a motion in federal court to force the government to prosecute him.
It’s an unusual effort to break out of the legal limbo that has derailed his life and the lives of others jailed since Sept. 11, 2001, in the government’s war on terrorism.
After charging 441 detainees in terrorism and terrorism-related cases, federal authorities have won 261 convictions, a new Justice Department study found. Most of the convictions were for petty offenses, not terrorism.
An undetermined number of suspects, including Rashid, still are detained. About 150 cases are pending.
U.S. officials say secret evidence supports a hard-line approach. Prosecutors are trying “to prevent terrorist acts before they can occur,” Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said.
But civil-liberties leaders question basic fairness.
“Yes, we want to be safe, but do we want to sacrifice our liberties in the process? … If you want to always be safe, you could lock everybody up. But that’s not what our system is based on,” said Judy Rabinovitz, senior attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Rashid made his move, through his attorney Jeff Pagliuca, after U.S. Attorney Troy Eid filed a motion Oct. 2 to drop a lesser immigration charge the government was pursuing as the FBI’s initial terrorism case evaporated, court records show.
By dropping the immigration charge, Eid had planned to clear the way for Rashid to be deported back to his native Pakistan for misdemeanor assault. In 2003, a jury found Rashid guilty of assaulting a street-gang member he said threatened his kids. He received a 401-day sentence that was mostly suspended.
Now Rashid’s motion – to block federal prosecutors from dropping their case – aims to delay his deportation and further clear his record. He’s been held in federal custody at his lawyer’s request to avoid deportation until the federal case is resolved.
Rashid comes from Quetta, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, an unsettled hotbed of anti-U.S. sentiment where Taliban forces are on the rise. His wife and children say they dread moving there if he is deported but would do so to be together.
“It doesn’t do anybody in our country any good to have this man deported back to Pakistan on a misdemeanor,” Pagliuca said. “… I’d rather have Mr. Rashid here taking care of his children.”
Chief U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock must decide how to handle this jam – with feds asking to drop their charges and Rashid asking for a trial to exonerate himself and let his family stay a bit longer in the country.
Rashid already has served more time in prison than would be possible if prosecutors won a conviction on the lesser immigration charge they’re now trying to drop.
He immigrated to the United States legally in November 1997. His wife, Saima Saima, and her father, Abdul Qayyum, are naturalized U.S. citizens. Rashid worked driving an airport shuttle as they raised their kids.
Federal agents began investigating him and his family in 2002 after President Bush and then- Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to use every legal tool they could to detain and prosecute possible terrorists. Rashid had visited Pakistan that year.
Denver-based FBI Special Agent Mike Castro testified at a 2003 detention hearing that there was evidence Rashid bragged he had fought against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and that he was in Colorado awaiting orders to carry out violent acts.
Said Pagliuca: “I don’t believe it. Why didn’t they charge him as a terrorist?”
Castro and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Ross Godwin, members of a joint terrorism task force, went to California and questioned Imran Khan, son of Rashid’s father-in-law by a previous marriage, who had entered the United States in August 1997 with Rashid’s wife.
The agents sought Kahn as a source on Rashid and others. Though they lacked a warrant, they arrested Khan and hauled him back to Colorado in shackles, court records show.
In a 2004 court order, Judge Babcock stated that “the terrorism implications of this case have since evaporated” and that “there was confusion about how and under what authority an FBI and (immigration) agent working in concert in a mixed civil and criminal investigation should conduct their investigation.”
Federal officials recently have rebuffed repeated efforts to interview Rashid at the Englewood federal prison. He was held previously at a federal immigration prison in Aurora.
Family members can visit, including a toddler born during Rashid’s confinement.
The older children regularly ask about their father and beg to stay in their schools.
U.S. authorities “are breaking this family. We’ve been patient. … This is very unfair,” Rashid’s wife said in a Denver mosque. “They still think he’s a terrorist.”
Staff writer Bruce Finley can be reached at 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com.
